The New Edition of the Letters of Vincent van Gogh on the
Web

Abstract

The New Edition of the Letters of Vincent Van Gogh on the
Web is a review of the web edition of the complete authorial
correspondence of the 19th century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh published by
the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences in 2009. While the print version, published by Thames
& Hudson in the same year, received ample attention in the specialized
and generalist press, the web edition enjoyed less publicity; this review
considers the added value of the web version.

Although the sources in question — a corpus of 902 letters — date back to a
relatively recent past, this scholarly edition is the tail of a long chain of
cultural reading and re-reading of Van Gogh’s letters, extracts of which were
already being published in the 1890s, immediately after the artist’s death, with
the first print edition appearing in 1914. Of all the preceding publications,
what makes this scholarly enterprise particularly interesting for the readers of
DHQ is that it is the first complete edition of
Van Gogh’s correspondence to have been published in digital form and made
available on the web.

Hence in the present review we ask, What does digital form mean in this case of
hybrid (print/web) production? How was the whole edition produced? Does the web
incarnation make a difference? What added value, if any, does it bring
about?

Books with a Digital Backbone

It is noteworthy that the digital edition — intended here in the wide sense of
the full set of software, programs, scripts, electronic marked-up texts, digital
images — represents the backbone not only of the web edition, but also of a
refined printed edition; indeed, quoting the editors, the print edition would
not exist in its present form without its electronic matrix, which is much more
that just the counterpart of its paper version:

By 2004
changes in the world of publishing and the rapidly growing potential offered
by electronic media had caused the steering committee to reconsider, and it
was decided to publish the large, all-encompassing edition digitally. This
does greater justice to the immense volume of material and the complex of
interrelated layers of information, and gives visitors to the site more
options and more ways to use the edition. For the very significant numbers
of people we believe would prefer to study or enjoy the letters by reading
them in the "traditional" manner, there is an accessible, fully
illustrated print version, with brief notes; the content derives
directly from the scholarly web edition [my emphasis]. This
five-volume edition appears — at the same time as the present web edition —
in three languages: English, Dutch and French.

This new complete print edition of Vincent van Gogh’s letters was distributed
worldwide as British edition (slipcased with a CD-ROM of the letters in their
original languages, mainly Dutch) by [Thames & Hudson 2009] in 2009. It
encompasses more than two thousand pages in six heavy volumes of translucent
paper, the first five of which include the corpus of translated letters where
each main text section is beautifully laid out in one or two columns and
accompanied by editorial side notes, relevant small illustrations (art works in
the form of paintings and etchings that Van Gogh mentions in his correspondence
or that the editors imply are referred to by the Dutch author), and some
facsimiles of the letters in full page (generally only when a sketch by the
artist occurs). The letters, each of which is preceded by some introductory
material, are grouped into chronological sections marking certain segments of
Van Gogh's life.

Table 1.

On the left the 6 blue volumes next to a box of matches.
On the right, an example of a typical page layout taken from volume 1. On
the top between the two black lines: location, date, addressee and letter
identification number. On one column: content of the letter translated into
English. In the centre: illustration of an artwork mentioned in this letter
by Van Gogh captioned by corresponding name of artist and title. On the
right hand side: editorial notes.

In addition, the whole sixth and last volume collects rich contextual information
featuring, among other elements, editorial commentary, genealogies, maps and
plans, and a technical glossary. This acts as a sort of access resource to the
other volumes by including a comprehensive and detailed set of indices: an index
of authorial works, divided into an index by title and indices ordered by the
work’s classification number organised by type (paintings, x-rays and
photographs of paintings, works on paper and sketches); index of other artists’
works, and a separate index of sketches in the case of Gaugin’s; index of
photographs, documents, periodicals and literary works; index of biblical
quotations (subdivided into relevant books and sections); index of people, in
general and by correspondent (the majority of the letters are addressed to Van
Gogh’s brother, Theo); and index of places. The latter includes subdivisions of
cities into relevant locations by type (e.g. cathedral or tower); interestingly,
art exhibitions are also marked as distinct references within locations.

Figure 1.

Snippet from volume 6: first part of the list of references to
London in the index of places.

All the components that make up the six-volume publication are also available on
the web edition. Their inclusion in the web edition — possibly with the
exception of the index of locations, which is less granular on the web — is
always comprehensive, rather than selective as in the print version, and is
enriched by further interconnected material. Indeed, starting from the text
view, the web edition includes the following additional components: the texts in
original language (mainly Dutch, in few cases French and English),[1] the diplomatic edition and, not only some, but all the
facsimiles.

It also seems that at places the web edition contains some diversified or
entirely new material: for example, in letter 282, the illustration of the
artwork Sorrow by Vincent van Gogh is available
only as black and white reproduction of the relevant lithograph in the printed
edition volume 2, while on the web, its coloured impression is also reproduced:
F 929 / JH 129 (click on the "artworks"
tab at http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let282/letter.html). Another
example is the drawing entitled "Reader" by the
artist and Van Gogh’s friend Anthon Gerard Alexander van Rappard; in the books,
the relevant illustration is reproduced rather small only along the text of
letter 178, while on the web, we find it under the artworks tab of both letters
the notes of which mention it: 168 and 178.

Table 2.

The drawing entitled "Reader"
by the artist and Van Gogh’s friend Anthon Gerard Alexander van Rappard –
held at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and classified as Illustration 1902
in this edition — can be traced on the web in the notes of two different
letters (168 and 178) as shown in the search results above. Both letters on
the web include the relevant illustration (reproduced here on the left),
while in the books, it is included only once (in letter 178) possibly for
space or aesthetic reasons.

A more systematic case of selective rendering in the books that was integrated on
the web by additional information is the content of the captions of artworks
(many institutions and private individuals made image material available to the
project): on the web the institution holding the relevant work is always
presented when known; in addition, the artistic technique of composition is
mentioned, as well as the real dimension of the work in question, while in the
volumes such information is entirely missing.

Table 3.

The same painting by Van Gogh as reproduced in print
(left) and on the web (right). The caption on the web is more complete; in
addition to title and identification number, it includes the institution
holding the relevant work at the bottom, and the artistic technique of
composition together with real dimension at the top.

The Editorial Model behind the Web Edition

A more detailed analysis of the components that make up the web edition reveals
how its features support a fruition process that is rather distinctive from the
reading process facilitated by its print form. Those mechanisms offered by the
web, such as pointers to a textual note in the books functioning as active links
on the web, are obviously exploited in the web resource in question. However,
the functionalities associated with the objects making up the edition are
amplified in its digital form in a manner that goes far beyond the emerging
conventions of academic web publishing. Indeed, the richness of an easy-to-read
interface in the web edition derives from the ability of its designers both to
understand and render the integrity of the editorial model behind it. It is
precisely the full appreciation of this model that lays the added value of the
web edition where, possibly, the intertextual dimension of the man Van Gogh as
writer, reader and artist all in one stands out even further than it does in the
book form (or in a physical exhibition; see Figure
10.) To the attentive reader the evidence of the underlying structure
of such editorial model is easily revealed.

To start from the reading panels, the editorial model is manipulated so as to
create a sophisticated interplay across all components of the edition which
results in a flexible choreography compared to the fixed layout of the books:
the balance lays much less in favour of the translated text as core of the
edition.

While reading one of the letters, for instance, the viewing panel on the left can
be set to display any of the selected components of the edition – i.e. original
text, diplomatic edition (truthful to the level of line endings), facsimile,
notes, and artworks — and be vertically aligned with one or more — depending on
the screen size — panels of the same kind on the right.

Figure 2.

Example of a three-panel view with English text at the far left
(panel 1), column containing the editorial notes, original text in Dutch
(panel 2) and artworks panel at the far right (panel 3). Note also the
navigation between previous and next letter at the far right end of the
first light brown bar, the possibility to search this letter only or print
it, and the list of recently visited letters (possibly the only element
aiming at tracking the user’s navigation in this web edition).

The facsimiles of the letters can be kept at the level of the other viewing
panels or be enlarged, panned, or zoomed in and out in a separate window.

Figure 3.

Example of a three-panel view with again English text at the far
left (panel 1), column containing the letter metadata, facsimile (panel 2)
and artworks panel at the far right (panel 3).

Figure 4.

A grey label and icon signals the presence of a sketch at the
relevant point in the text. By clicking on it, a separate window containing
the facsimile opens up exactly on the corresponding folio. Note the
numbering of multiple sketches (A, B etc.) in the text, and the metadata
section on the grey label together with the guiding sequence of verso/recto
in the facsimile window.

Moving now to the more granular level of the text and notes, each element of the
editorial model that the editors believed to play a certain semantic function —
namely names, references to artworks and literature — is visibly linked to the
relevant index of other letters where the same element is mentioned or
discussed.

Figure 6.

The artworks by Jean-François Millet were very much appreciated,
copied and loved by Vincent van Gogh. Evidence of this is that fact that the
artist is mentioned in 179 of his letters. As shown above, from a note in
one of the letter we can reach the index of these references with only one
click.

This is the case not only for explicit and recognisable proper names but also for
general referencing strings. The reader can mouse over such strings to get a
concise but precise sort of "identification label." In letter 241, for
instance, "the carpenter" mentioned in line 88 and
"the owner" mentioned in line
92[2] are identified as "Willem Kiesenberg
(1814-1904) acquaintance of Van Gogh in The Hague" and "Pieter Willem de Zwart (1826-1905) landlord in The Hague,
father of Michiel Antonie de Zwart," respectively.

The editorial strategy adopted to interpret, classify and filter the thick
contextual and textual information encompassed by Van Gogh’s letters emerges
even further while using the advanced search form and while examining its
structure. As for the print indices briefly described above, each search field
reveals the complexity of a thoroughly-planned editorial enterprise. For
example, this edition distinguishes references to the Bible from general
references to other kind of literature, the correspondence with numbering
sequences of previous editions (namely, De la Faille and Hulsker’s) was
recorded, one can identify authors by forename or surname, and their work by
title. The corpus of letters is divided into sixteen chronological periods.

As an engaging puzzle, the auto-completion of the search fields clarifies all
this and tells more about what the editors decided to do or what the web
publication was supposed to privilege or focus on.

Figure 7.

Example of the use of the advanced search form. By typing
"angelus" in the "work of art" field, the auto-completion menu
on the right hand side comes up with some suggestions. The fourth is the one
we were looking for. By clicking on the search tab, we get to the search
results shown below.

Figure 8.

An action of mouse over the relevant reference to a letter in the
search results will bring up the corresponding snippet in the text where the
searched element in question is mentioned. This facilitates the filtering
across search results by speeding up the discovery of the relevant letter
and by avoiding useless steps of direct consultations.

Figure 9.

Here is the final step of the search process outlined above: the
visualisation of the artwork in question, a copy of the Angelus of Millet made by Van Gogh. The windows containing
illustrations of artworks open up by clicking on the relevant thumbnail on
the artworks panel or by following any references to artworks in the notes.
The latter are signalled with a distinctive round orange and brown icon
which makes them easy to spot while screening the text.

Figure 10.

This painting (Piles of French novels and a
rose in a glass — "Romans parisiens")
by Van Gogh was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London at the The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters
exhibition (23 January — 18 April 2010) where over 35 original letters,
other around 65 paintings and 30 drawings were put on display in the same
rooms. Although the physical vicinity of these objects allows the visitor to
grasp the intimate connection between the content of the letters, the life
of the painter, its readings and artistic production, it still deals with a
sort of demonstration, a very enjoyable but somehow restricted narrative
thread compared to the ones one can expand, reconstruct, deconstruct and
re-invent browsing the web edition.

Collaborative Nature, Best Practices and Open Source

The collaborative project behind the publication of the current edition started
officially in 1994. During its lifecycle, the project engaged other national and
international initiatives relevant to Van Gogh studies by opening up its
development to an interdisciplinary framework, establishing cooperative efforts
of various kinds (between individuals and, more importantly across institutions
at the international level, from museums, galleries and auction houses to
libraries and archives), and using lessons learned through past endeavours. The
open and collaborative nature of the work is evident when we examine the web
form of the edition where the production choices include the adoption of
scholarly standards in text encoding and the full endorsement of open source
software.

Starting from the text, once edited within a word processor in the first place,
each letter was automatically converted into an XML document by adopting the
community-based Text Encoding
Initiative (TEI) guidelines. Furthermore, the dedicated TEI schema
developed for the edition was enriched with some of the solutions conceived and
made public by another project also aiming at structuring and editing
correspondence: the Digital
Archive of Letters in Flanders.

Based, therefore, on an extensive use of best practices in text encoding, the Van
Gogh TEI XML letters include a defined set of metadata for each letter (e.g.
number, date), its full transcription in the original language, its translation
into English, relevant notes (including textual notes), and the connection
between text and manuscript images — in brief, the full electronic backbone
which is then rendered both in print form as content of the books and in digital
form on the web.

Furthermore, as hinted at above, the web edition is complemented with a series of
interconnected data sources. Indeed, the editors compiled various databases
containing the physical descriptions of the letters, data about the
illustrations, and information about the people mentioned by the Dutch painter
in his correspondence. The integration between the TEI document compiled for
each letter and such complementary material is obtained by recurring to two
programmes developed in Ruby,
an open source programming language.

Besides the XHTML rendition, such integration between the document level and the
contextual databases becomes evident, as seen above, while using the indices or
the search facility as well as while encountering some para-textual information
accompanying the letters. For example, the captions of the illustrations or the
textual notes with references to artworks could not link back to the relevant
index locorum without such integration. Indeed, two
Ruby programmes were developed to generate an index from the TEI XML files as
well as from the relevant database sources, and to perform dynamic searches
prompted by the user on the resulting index. The search index itself is built by
recurring, yet again, to another open source software: Apache Lucene.

Moving to the digitisation process itself, the 902 surviving letters under study
have undergone a process of physical conservation against decay (e.g.
deacidification, repairs, controlled storage) and digitisation within the Netherland national Metamorfoze
programme, a collaborative effort supported by the National Library
and the National Archives of the Netherlands.

The image processing and zooming facility on the web edition is also based on an
open source programme known as GSV image viewer, a javascript driven user interface, coupled with
the ImageMagick
suite, also a free and GNU GPL compatible software to manipulate
images. The result is an image interface for the letters facsimile which behaves
very similarly to the Google Map interface: indeed, high-resolution images much
larger than the screen can be panned and zoomed by fetching tiled sections on
demand, while minimising the loading effect on the network, since only portions
of the facsimile are effectively visualised at any given time. It has to be
noted that three servers are behind the architecture which supports the
visualisation of the facsimiles.

To conclude, thanks to a rather strategic institutional collaboration spearheaded
by the Van Gogh
Museum and the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences — renowned institutions in the field of scholarly publishing
of literary and historical texts — this new edition is the example of a
successful marriage between thorough editing processes and responsible
professional production of a rich electronic resource, which in fact is
attractive to a wide audience. It fulfils the highest scholarly standards while
at the same time being open to anyone with a web connection and some curiosity
towards the genial mind that was Vincent van Gogh’s. Such openness could have
possibly gone further by envisaging the possibility of users interacting with
this resource. At present, the web page section entitled "Updates" is empty
and does not contain any feedback mechanism, but instead promises that this
hybrid edition will record changes in both the web and print edition. It is
possibly too much to aim for, but that now that Van Gogh’s correspondence is all
skilfully edited, searchable, and beautifully integrated with all sorts of
contextual material and free to read online, one would think that the next step
could be to make it free to write and comment on. The Van Gogh Museum is not
insensitive to the issue and, though separate from the scholarly edition, has
already set up a blog: http://www.vangoghsblog.com/.

Could have he known, Van Gogh, that after more than a hundred years his passion
would have become true heritage of his beloved ordinary women and men?

Notes

[1]Despite
the fact that the letters are available in all original languages, it does
not seem to be possible to search letters by language in the search
form.

[2]Understandably, line numbers are available only in the diplomatic
edition (only published on the web). Pointers to editorial notes are
available in all three versions of the text (original, diplomatic and
translated text). However, links to indices and the possibility to identify
referencing strings are only active in the translated text. This could
either mean that the relevant mark up has been applied to the translated
text only – and that in addition there is no one to one correspondence
between, for instance, referring strings in the original text and referring
strings in the translated texts – or simply that an editorial decision was
made to leave the original text and diplomatic edition cleaner to facilitate
reading.